not much progress was made at converting the nobles and people of Mercia. The mission of Chad After an inconclusive start, decisive steps to Christianise Mercia were taken by Chad (Latinised by Bede as Ceadda), the fifth bishop to minister to the Mercians. He was a controversial figure, who had been removed from his duties among the Northumbrians by the Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus. Finding his realm without a bishop in 669, King Wulfhere requested Theodore to send one, and Theodore despatched Chad. Wulfhere gave him land to build a monastery at Lichfield which is around north-west of Tamworth. These early bishops were known as bishops of the Middle Angles and/or the Mercians and, in Chad's case, also of the Lindsey people: bishoprics were still ethnic rather than territorial, according to Celtic tradition. Chad tirelessly evangelised Mercia, and Bede credits him with the conversion of the kingdom, despite the briefness of his episcopate—less than three years. The sons of Penda not only supported Christian missionaries but invested heavily in the Church. Wulfhere greatly endowed the family monastery at Medeshamstede. In addition to the gift of land at Lichfield, he also gave Chad land for a monastery at Barwae—probably the modern Barrow upon Humber. Merewalh, sub-king of the Magonsæte, to the west, in modern Shropshire and Herefordshire, and apparently a brother or half-brother of Wulfhere, fathered a dynasty of abbesses, endowing an abbey at Leominster and probably also that at Much Wenlock, which his daughter Mildburh headed. As in other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the many small monasteries allowed the political/military and ecclesiastical leadership to consolidate their unity through bonds of kinship. Division of Mercia into dioceses However, Mercia did not long survive as an ecclesiastical entity. Chad's successor, Winfrith, was expected to conform more closely to Roman norms but was soon at loggerheads with Archbishop Theodore. Involved in similar problems with Wilfrid of York, from 676 Theodore adopted a policy of appointing bishops to much smaller tribal groups within the kingdoms, thus covering smaller areas—closer in size to those found in Francia and other West European countries. Hence, bishoprics were based at Worcester for the Hwiccas, at Hereford for the Magonsæte, at Lincoln for the Lindsey people, the latter attached to York rather than Canterbury, and at Leicester, perhaps for the Middle Angles. This left the remaining diocese still based at Lichfield and still very large, but much more manageable. For a